


Her Child

by seamscribe



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Not A Fix-It, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 03:59:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18886741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seamscribe/pseuds/seamscribe
Summary: This is not a fix-it fic. Jaime will remain a dumb, dead dick.I just wanted to conceive (hahaha) of a way that Brienne ending up pregnant with Jaime's baby wouldn't be totally depressing. She will survive!





	Her Child

  


Her Child

 

 

“...The child is a Lannister, after all.”

 

Those are the words that catch her ear and force her out of the fog she’s been drifting in and out of for the past few moons. Since the night she begged Jaime to stay and he turned his back on her. Worse when she found out how he died in his so- _very_ -hateful sister’s arms. And the worst yet when the maester, though hastily trained by Samwell Tarly, told her with devastating confidence that she’s carrying a child. _His_ child.

 

The fog has kept her mostly silent on the matter, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious now, at around four moons along. Now it’s become something of an open secret, with not many daring to address it in front of her. Everyone left in Winterfell likely pities her too much.

 

Only her Lady Sansa has spoken to her about it. Brienne had been shocked when the younger woman had urged her to drink a tea infused with tansy that would likely rid her of the child. “I truly beg you, Brienne,” she had said softly, her eyes glittering with tears, holding her knight’s hand tightly. “Make things easier for yourself this once. How can you bear to have his child?”

 

And truthfully, she had felt sick at the idea. But to rid herself of the child had not even crossed her mind.

 

In a voice hoarse with disuse, Brienne had finally replied, “I cannot, my Lady. I am sorry, but...I...I cannot.” She swallowed hard, digging her nails into her palms. “I know you must think me very weak--”

 

“I would never call you weak, Brienne,” Sansa cuts her off gently. “On the contrary, I think this is the choice that will require the most strength you possess.” Sansa shook her head, privately thinking that her mother would likely roll over in her grave at the idea of a Lannister bastard growing up at Winterfell, no matter the circumstances. But she is not her mother, and the world is so very gray. She hopes Jaime Lannister is burning in one of the seven hells, if only for what he’s done to her sworn sword.

 

“Well, I swore a vow that you would always have a place at my table. I suppose that will have to be two places.” To stop any tears from either of them, Sansa had briskly moved on to business. “We shall ask our good King to legitimize the child. If it is a boy, he can be the heir to Tarth, and you need never marry if you do not care to.”

 

“The heir to Tarth,” Brienne had repeated through numb lips.   

 

And so, although she has tried her best not to hear the name _Lannister_ for what feels like a very long time, her heard abruptly clears now. For they can only be talking about the child that is starting to make itself known beneath her tunic. _Her_ child. And though she may have barely come to terms with the fact that such a child should even _exist_ , the last thing she will do is call it a lion and let it be shipped off to Casterly Rock.

 

It is Lord Tyrion who spoke, of course, probably the only person left in Westeros who cares what becomes of the Lannister name. _If you had sent him back to me, he might have lived. He might have lived to be a father and a good man._

 

Though she still thinks he is a good man. Was a good man. Even if his final decision was stupid and broke her heart, it had been driven by love, not evil. Then again, all his evil actions had been driven by love, hadn’t they? Ah, these are the sorts of thoughts she’s been avoiding so intently.

 

Burning under the eyes of the council, she speaks, her voice cold. “My child…” Saying the words aloud almost takes her breath away. Without thought, she skims a hand down the front of her elaborately embroidered Stark tunic and rests it over the slight curve there. She gathers herself and says, “My child is a Tarth. That is the last I wish to speak on the matter, my Lord.”

 

Tyrion quirks and eyebrow and says, “How? By immaculate conception?”

 

“It is none of your concern,” Brienne replies flatly.

 

Tyrion looks around for help; none comes. Everyone knows the child is Jaime Lannister’s, but no one here will insult her by saying so, and that’s what they consider Jaime Lannister’s bastard to be--an insult.

 

“My child is a Tarth,” she repeats. “The heir to Tarth.”

 

Sansa then jumps in to say, “If it pleases you, your Grace.”

 

It all happens too fast and too clean for Tyrion to protest. With one stroke of the pen, Jaime Lannister’s legacy comes to an unceremonious end.

   

“The child’s name?” Ser Davos ventures to ask.

 

Brienne is unable to reply for a long moment. If Jaime were here, she would not have hesitated to say Catelyn for a girl. It would have felt right. It would have _been_ right. But since his final actions...she can’t imagine it. Perhaps he would have wanted to call her Joanna after his mother. She isn’t sure she can bear that either.

 

“I haven’t decided.”

 

Afterwards, she walks with Bran, pushing his chair. She is one of the only people lately who can tolerate spending time with Bran, since she is almost as silent as he.  

 

“He thought of you before he died,” Bran says suddenly.

 

She is touched that he is trying to console her. She wishes it would work so she could say thank you, but all she can say is, “He still died.” Then she asks, “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” He doesn’t know, which strikes her as oddly hilarious, and if her laughter is hysterical, Bran doesn’t mention it. Bran is good company, really.

 

It is not until she’s in the baths at Winterfell a moon’s turn later that she decides on a name.

 

She avoids the baths generally; she and Jaime had spent enough evenings here that it can serve as a painful reminder. This particular evening, however, her lower back is serving as her painful reminder instead, and that is one pain that she can soothe.

 

The curve of her belly has grown; her hands stray to it often now. Actually, one hand goes to her belly even as one goes to the pommel of her sword, apparently thinking to protect the future Tarth the only way she knows how--with violence. She knows she is capable of tenderness, painfully so, but that part of her has grown silent as the godswood. She dreads to think how she will fare as a mother. Thankfully, although somewhat embarrassingly, Sansa has grown downright maternal with her, almost balancing Brienne’s quiet and rather grim acceptance with her steady optimism.

 

It doesn’t take long for her thoughts to stray to Jaime. This is why she has avoided the baths. At least she has come after midnight, when the chambers are abandoned and there is no one to see if she cries quietly to herself, just a bit.

 

She sinks underneath the water and watches the golden glimmer of the wall torches on the surface above her. Listens to the steady beat of her heart. Thinks of the sea. Remembers Jaime once saying to her, _I don't intend to be the first Lannister to die in a bathtub._ His body going slack in her arms while he whispered, _Jaime. My name is Jaime._

 

 _Could I stay down here?_ she wonders. _Which of the seven hells would I go to if I just stayed down here forever?_

 

The baby kicks.    

 

Brienne is so startled that she jolts up in the water, running both hands over her belly. The baby kicks again and the sensation is so odd that she laughs, then laughs some more in amazement, staring down at her abdomen.

 

“Seems you already have some strong opinions,” she murmurs, breathless from laughing. “Are you telling me to stop being dramatic?” Another kick. “Perhaps you’re right,” she says, settling at the edge of the tub. “Brienne of Tarth cannot simply die in the bath tub, can she?”

 

 _Brienne of Tarth._ He may have made her a knight, and he may have made her a mother, but he had not made her Brienne of Tarth; she had done that all on her own. He may have given her armor and a sword and, most importantly, his faith, but she had fought so many of those battles alone.

 

Well, not alone. She had always had one unfailing companion.

 

She decides then to name the child after the best man she knows.

 

***

 

Podrick Tarth asks his mother the truth about his father when he is four and ten. He is six years older than his siblings, and does not share their red hair or blue eyes; instead, he has hair of light gold and eyes that are sea green. He has heard more than one person whisper behind their hands that he looks like his father--and they do not mean Tormund Giantsbane.

 

They are sailing to Tarth, a place he’s never been but was born to rule. He knows as much as he can from books and his mother’s lessons, but it’s finally come time for him to see it for himself. His mother had gone there before, when he was just a child, and had been gone so long that he now knows people had wondered if she might not come back at all.  

 

When she tells him his father is Jaime Lannister, he is mightily disappointed. He had secretly hoped his father was his namesake, the squire and then knight that had faithfully followed his mother on her dangerous journeys and lived with them at Winterfell for many years, but chose for some reason not to marry her. No one had anything bad to say about Ser Podrick Payne.

 

Jaime Lannister, on the other hand…

 

He’s heard all the stories, of course, about how he saved the Maid of Tarth from both men and beasts, how he armed her, knighted her, fought the dead at her side in the Battle of Ice and Fire. But he has heard most of it second-hand, and he has only ever heard his mother mildly defend the man against criticism, as neutrally as if she was saying ‘Brussel sprouts are not so bad if you salt them’.

 

Then again, his mother is not the most demonstrative woman. Still, he knows Jaime Lannister’s last moments had been spent in King’s Landing, which meant he had left her. Left _them_.

 

Brienne knows her son well enough to read his thoughts on his face (handsome and only lightly freckled, but he had inherited her crooked teeth). “He didn’t know about you when he left.”

 

“Oh.” Podrick Tarth is quiet for a time, and then, wrinkling his nose in a way that makes him look like a little boy again, says, “I always thought Uncle Pod was my real father. Maybe I’ll just go on thinking that.”

 

Brienne chuckles and says, “I met Pod when he was about your age, love, that would be entirely inappropriate.”

 

“Papa knows?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“He never let on.”

 

“I would hope not.”

 

“Did you love him?”

 

“Very much,” his mother replies softly.

 

“Do you still?”

 

After a time, she answers, “I love what he did for me. And I love what he could have been. What he _was_ , for a little while. But I had to stop loving him.”

 

“How?”

 

“I wish I could tell you, pea pod, but I am not sure how I did it myself.”

 

“I suppose Papa helped,” Podrick says with a slight smirk.

 

Brienne gives him a stern look before her face softens into a smile. “Yes, Papa helped.” In a more serious tone, she says, “You could have been heir to Casterly Rock. I am sorry I never told you, but...I thought you would be better off as a Tarth than as a Lannister.”

 

He lays a hand over his mother’s and says, “I am a Tarth, and I would never want to be any other.”

 

It doesn't matter. He is _her_ child, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Do I need to tag Tormund/Brienne? I don't know how to tag this mess, haha.
> 
> I have started work on another installment of the Highgarden series, as well as the next chapter of Meet In the Dark. I will endeavour to work on them harder so we can all wash this bad taste out of our mouths!!! #braimeisunbrokenokay


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